


Lay Flowers On My Grave

by slightlyjillian



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Friendship, Grief, M/M, Minor Character Death, Second Chances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-01
Updated: 2010-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlyjillian/pseuds/slightlyjillian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>during-to-post GW. pre-EW. Soon enough there wasn't a person who hadn't lost<i> someone</i> in the godforsaken war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Flowers On My Grave

"I will blow you to space if you don't stop talking about seeing that man," Nichol shouted from the shower. The water started to go lukewarm. "I will blow myself to space..." he muttered the rest as no amount of coaxing the equipment would change the water to heat.

"All this chatter about _blowing_ things." Walker laughed during the next of his many paces along the hallway. The bathroom vents had quit working, moreover it wasn't like Nichol hadn't made it very clear that Walker could _look_ but it changed nothing between them.

"I can complain. You're the one getting stationed in a decent climate." Nichol wrapped himself with a towel and declared the entire bathing experience a disaster. He should have taken up the military offer for lodging rather than visiting his buddy from the academy. Walker leaned in the doorway. His exotically narrow eyes smiled but kept politely fixed on Nichol's face.

"Yes, that I am. And I hear that we're getting briefed on some pretty interesting technology," Walker added as Nichol slipped past to find his luggage.

"Don't rub it in," Nichol grumbled. "Once I get the details sorted, I'm sure I'll have my hands in mobile suits again."

"Your proposal was good," Walker agreed, following. "You just need to, ah, pay a few dues to proper authorities. Follow protocol!"

"I swear I'm following the rules from here on out." Nichol swatted with the towel toward Walker. "Let a man get dressed in peace."

"Why do you treat me this way?" Walker made a face at the sudden revelation of a bare ass. Given the situation was his fault, Nichol couldn't really blame Walker for breaking their rule. Hell, Walker wasn't a pervert.

He just wished they'd talked about something else.

Since that was the last conversation they were ever going to have.

^^^

The funerals after the attack on Corsica had been a joke. The press had filled the aisles and the families had little time to honor their lost sons and daughters as the minister read through the names like a graduation. So he'd followed the map to the Walker family house where he could remember Philip properly. Alone among the pockets of family and friends, he decided to introduce himself.

"So you're the young man Philip would always go on about." Mrs. Walker shook Nichol's hand.

Nichol didn't know what to say. He hadn't expected to be recognized. Even though he and Philip Walker had been closer than anyone, they'd never met each other's family. He nodded.

"We wondered if he was ever going to get your attention." Her smile didn't diminish as the light reflected from unshed tears. "Perhaps we could find a few of his letters, so you could have them."

"Oh," Nichol's lips slowly gasped like a fish. She though he was _that other guy_.

"He would have wanted you to have them." She had the same eyes as her son. When they stayed calmly fixed on Nichol's he knew he couldn't deny her. It was the least he could do.

More so when that blond bastard was no where to be seen.

^^^

_Hey Ma, I guess my writing is worth something. He says that I'm pretty good at putting things into words for him. I hardly know how that's possible since I'm little more than a buzz of nerves wherever he's around._

Nichol lounged in his bunk and dropped his hand with the letter to rest near his leg. As it so happened, Nichol wasn't the only one Walker had given an earful of updates and news about this Zechs. The mild hero worship and ample physical admiration read more like a romantic comedy than a proper soldier's account, but Nichol figured that was just how the guy had worked.

The letters made him miss Philip. He couldn't read more than a few lines before his stomach became sick and threatened to lose the little food Nichol had managed to eat in the mess. Barge was not going to win any awards for their cafeteria staff.

He was glad for Mrs. Walker's mistake though. Even if he wasn't the main subject in the letters, now and again Nichol recognized himself in the paragraphs. _My good friend_.

The thought haunted him so sharply, Nichol hadn't been able to read another word for weeks. Soon enough there wasn't a person who hadn't lost _someone_ in the godforsaken war.

"My dolls are going to change the future," Nichol said to the ceiling. So maybe no one else cared about the future. Walker had, so Nichol would too. "They'll solve all disputes at once. No more soldiers have to die."

^^^

Now and again Nichol would come across an officer or soldier who had graduated around the same time as himself. Sometimes they knew about Walker or some other casualty from the skirmishes with the Gundams.

"Damn those terrorists." Nichol knew the anger made his face turn red, but it had to be said. "If the government could only accept that it needs to follow Lord Treize in order to put things right again."

Which was what he'd believed until Treize's favorite Colonel, and his own commanding officer, started harboring Gundam pilots and defying all reason.

Then even Zechs Merquise soiled the battle with his political posturing. When the man Walker loved appeared identifying himself as _Milliardo Peacecraft_ from a country that promoted pacifism and compliance, Nichol threw a fistful of Walker's letters onto the metal floor of his bunk. He regathered them slowly setting each page delicately in order and returned them to their safe container.

If this future was what came next, what had Walker died for? He needed direction. Nichol made the call to Duke Dermail.

"Quite right to contact me, soldier," the Duke had said. "Let me worry about achieving this peace. I am sending further instructions for you to restore balance on Barge."

Nichol took the orders and ran them through a personal decoder once safely in his room. So he was supposed to assume authority on the station?

_What was one more betrayal in the thick of all the others?_ he reasoned. At least he remembered what they were supposed to be fighting for.

^^^

He'd read the letters often enough that he could almost visualize the precise handwriting when Nichol closed his eyes against the walls of his containment cell. He had nothing better to do than try to make sense of Walker's thoughts again. Had he been wrong? Had Nichol been wrong?

Then again the world had gone all backwards. He was the one being held while a Gundam pilot pulled Une's strings.

The door opened with the wretched groan of ill kept metal plating, which made it all the more unlikely a prisoner could escape without notice. Or a visitor to come inside.

He kept his eyes closed. If they were going to give him orders, he'd hear them easily enough. Instead he heard the door close and Nichol wasn't certain if he'd heard anything at all. Or was he being visited by a ghost?

"I don't suppose you recognized the machine?" the newcomer said. "It wasn't finished yet when he first showed it to me. That day in Corsica."

Nichol would have rathered never to meet this person, but he had little choice now, didn't he? He opened his eyes. Even in the shadows, the man's uniform and hair stood out. So different from the muted appearance of Philip Walker in his drab browns and black.

"What are you doing here?" Nichol asked, unafraid to let his irritation ripple through every syllable.

"I understand you just tried to take out a colony. I'd say that's a lot of anger you've got trapped in you."

"Don't talk about me like you know me." Then Nichol bit his cheeks to keep from saying more. Everything he'd wanted to say to this person seemed an unnecessary waste of time. What difference did any action make anymore?

"You're right." The man calling himself Milliardo sank to the floor, stretching out his legs so they almost reached opposite to Nichol's slumped position. "I don't know you. But I think we do understand each other."

"I know you?" Nichol slipped, breaking his own desire for quiet.

"It's humiliating to take an order you don't agree with in order to follow one you aren't sure of."

"What are you talking about?"

"I don't know if I'm even alive anymore."

Nichol punched out with his leg to knock against Milliardo's fancy boot. The blonde man tipped his head back and laughed quietly.

Crossing his arms, Nichol grumbled, "You came in here talking about my friend. So are we going to reminisce or what's your point for being here?"

"You're nothing like him," Milliardo said at last. Then he cautiously drew in his legs, meaning to stand up.

"So you wanted me to _be him_, is that it?" Nichol snapped, standing himself. He took a half step closer then reconsidered. A very strange thought crossed his mind. "He didn't... you didn't... I'm not going to..."

Regardless of the tension, the _hostile_ tension, between them, Milliardo did move to get a better look at Nichol's face in the dim, flickering light. "No, his eyes were prettier. But you..."

Milliardo laughed again as Nichol shoved him away. The blond man wiped his cheeks. Was he pushing away tears of pain or mirth?

"You're messed up," Nichol grumbled. "I don't know what he saw in you."

"Ah see, now there it is. That's the fire of someone who felt it."

Nichol stared, this time keeping his voice quiet but Milliardo answered anyway.

"You_ loved_ him."

^^^

"So you aren't dead?" Nichol observed. The daylight rested whenever a cloud passed overhead and it was during such a time that Zechs Merquise appeared, in expensive but plain clothes, next to the gravestone marker for Philip Walker.

"I see you survived, too," Zechs said as reply. "I heard that you might have been part of something heroic."

"Don't believe everything you read, or I would think you went off your nut and led White Fang." Nichol turned from where he'd stood lost in thought for several minutes. The ground seemed reluctant to let loose of his shoes as if Walker had been pulling him down with the memories.

"What are you going to do next?"

Nichol sputtered a surprised laugh. "You visit his grave and ask me about my _career_?"

"It's something he'd probably be interested in," Zechs shrugged, oddly casual like his attire.

Narrowing his eyes, Nichol huffed again. "Something different, that's what I want." He considered the question more seriously. "I guess I'm never going to forget the stains on these hands. I either walk away or try to make amends."

"Give me a year," Zechs suddenly turned, a twitch under his blue eye and the man seemed nothing more than his young twenty years. "I'm not ready to be who this world needs me to be. I'm tired of being..."

"Now hold on," Nichol interrupted, then stopped when he recognized Zechs' immediate obedience. _Like that, is it?_ Then with a dismissive wave, said, "Go ahead, explain."

"He trusted you and saw something in you. I trusted him," Zechs responded as if he'd been thinking about it for so long that he could no longer explain it as well. "Maybe it's the same."

Nichol ran a nail along his eyebrow so he could partially block his face from the staring. "I thought you had a girlfriend."

It was Zechs' turn to look surprised. "Most people ask me about Treize."

"Oh," Nichol caught a new idea. "Wait, so you're saying? So that time at Barge, you thought that I was...?" Zechs didn't have to nod to be understood.

"Philip's mother said you took the letters."

Nichol glanced at the sky as if the day might present something even more strange. "So you did go to the wake?"

"No, I saw her last week."

"I suppose you want them," Nichol said, suddenly reluctant although he'd read the letters many times. Zechs didn't say anything. The walls were reforming, and Nichol could see the armor returning Zechs to the man the rest of the world wanted.

Walker would have hated it.

"One year," Nichol relaxed. "But you have to follow the same rules he did. First off," Nichol motioned with two fingers. "Eyes on the face."


End file.
